Salma Tahri’s world of horses, modesty and moroccan heritage
After reaching a wider audience through a viral horseback moment with Madonna in Morocco, Salma Tahri reveals a creative world shaped by horses, modest fashion, craftsmanship and cultural memory.
When Salma Tahri appeared riding alongside Madonna during the artist’s New Year celebrations in Morocco, the moment introduced La Cavalière Élégante to a much wider audience.
But the image only offered a glimpse of the world Salma has been building.
Behind it is a creative practice shaped by horses, modest fashion, Moroccan identity, craftsmanship and a deeply personal relationship with cultural memory.
“Whatever I do, I do it with love and passion, and I hope people can see that, and also culture. It’s very important for me to show and promote my culture in every aspect of my work.”
Salma’s visual universe brings together elements that are not often presented in the same frame.
A fully covered woman riding powerful stallions. Flowing black abayas. Moroccan landscapes. Equestrian discipline. Fashion treated not simply as clothing, but as presence.
What can appear as contrast from the outside is, in Salma’s work, part of the same language.
Modesty does not limit movement. Elegance does not soften strength. Fashion and horsemanship do not sit in separate worlds.
Instead, they become part of the same image and the same expression of identity.
Through her fashion line Filly Paris, Salma translates the aesthetic of La Cavalière Élégante into clothing and equestrian design.
The pieces draw from modest fashion, sculptural silhouettes, riding boots, gloves, draped fabrics and carefully considered details. Rather than functioning only as styling around the horse, the clothing becomes part of the relationship between rider, movement and image.
The way fabric moves while riding, the silhouette created on horseback and the interaction between clothing and the animal all become part of the composition.
For Salma, that world is also inseparable from Morocco.
“I try to create from Morocco, to produce in Morocco and to use Moroccan craftsmanship.”
That commitment places local production and craft inside a visual identity that could otherwise easily be read only through fashion or equestrian culture.
Her work becomes another way of carrying Moroccan references into a contemporary setting, not through costume or nostalgia, but through the materials, making and cultural context behind the image.
Salma was born in France to Moroccan parents from Ouazzane and Larache and describes growing up between two cultures.
Her relationship with horses later became an unexpected path back towards Morocco.
As that connection deepened, Salma discovered that her grandfather had also been a respected horseman. What had begun as a personal fascination with riding suddenly carried another layer of meaning.
The horse was no longer only something she loved.
It became connected to lineage.
That discovery helped transform riding into a space where memory, identity and belonging could meet. Through horses, Salma found another way of reconnecting with a part of her family history and with Morocco itself.
This personal dimension helps explain why the images of La Cavalière Élégante feel larger than fashion alone.
The horse, the clothing, the landscape and the cultural references are not separate visual ingredients assembled for effect. They come from different parts of Salma’s own experience and are brought together through a creative language she has made her own.
Her work also complicates familiar ideas of what a female equestrian figure is expected to look like.
Rather than adopting established visual codes, Salma has built her own.
She rides while fully covered. She brings modest fashion into an equestrian environment. She places Moroccan craft and identity inside a visual world that can feel cinematic, contemporary and internationally legible without disconnecting it from where it comes from.
The result is a form of authorship that is as much about choosing how to be seen as it is about creating an image.
The viral moment with Madonna may have brought more eyes to that world, but it did not create it.
Salma’s story had already been developing through horses, family memory, clothing, Morocco and the visual identity of La Cavalière Élégante.
What makes that world compelling is not simply the contrast between its elements.
It is the way Salma has made them belong together.

Photo: Alienor Gasperi / Vogue Arabia
↑Back to Top